Until now, those bottles were mostly shipped to China where they were downcycled into their final use.

The most effective recycling that uses the least resources turns them back into the original product so they can be recycled more than once. Plastic bottles can be recycled into new bottles about five times before they must be downcycled.

Recycling two billion PET bottles a year will also avoid the need for the 48 million gallons of gas that would be needed to make new bottles from virgin plastic.

The company plans to double capacity to over 4 billion bottles a year in mid-2013.